Sound recording first started because of a wish to record some of our son and daughter's
early words but soon developed from that into recording musical events and Sunday
services at the Hemel Hempstead Salvation Army, of which I am a member, and making
recordings further afield from time to time.

My recorders consisted of two Revox A77 machines, four Calrec CM652 Capacitor microphones,
having cardioid response patterns, fed the recorders via a Pro Kit self assembly
6 channel mixer. All of these items I still have and use very occasionally, despite
them being purchased during the period 1961/64. Incidentally, I was told by a reputable
service agent that a fully serviced A77 will still fetch a four figure sum though
I anticipate servicing costs would amount to a fair portion of this.

For more involved assignments two additional AKG Cardioid dynamic microphones were
also used but as these are no longer in my kit I must have passed them on to some
group or other as my recording activities are now very much simpler. Added to that
there were hundreds of metres of interconnecting cable.

The Revox machines are superbly constructed as can be seen in the photographs, being
indicative of their Swiss origins. Recording quality also matches the standard of
the machines interior. The Calrec microphones are also of excellent quality considering
there relative low cost at the time, around £40 each, and surprisingly were British
made.

Some of my assignments resulted in largish numbers (100 to 200) of cassettes being
required and as the budget would not stretch to a high speed copier they were produced
on two Neal cassette recorders. These since confined at a moment of madness to the
local dump.

A small number of my recordings were used on the BBC national radio the first being
on Christmas morning 1981, a sort of Christmas present for me. Rock group recordings
featured on the local radio, and others as far afield as the remote island of St
Helena in the south pacific.